My normal desktop PC was always on – doing some tasks in the background – but the noisy fan was annoying me. And because I had a spare ALIX 2D13 lying around that was doing nothing but gathering dust, I was wondering if I could switch some tasks from my normal PC to this ALIX 2D13 and only switch my normal PC on when needed.

A CompactFlash (CF) card is used as storage/boot device on the ALIX 2D13, but for the things I had in mind, more storage is needed. For this reason I’ve connected a little USB HD to the USB port of the ALIX 2D13.

On the software side, I’ve installed voyage linux on the CF card. Voyage Linux is a Debian derived distribution, which is nice because I know how to configure Debian GNU/Linux.

On the USB HD, I’ve created some partitions. Then I’ve added the following to /etc/fstab of the ALIX 2D13:

After setting up certain things like SSH access, fetchmail, postfix, … , I have now a minimal little computer that can do some tasks in the background like fetching and sorting my email and downloading podcasts and so on.

My normal PC is now off most of the time, which is not only good for my ears, but also for my electricity bill 🙂

A few days ago I noticed that mails send to my sister and brother got lost in cyberspace 🙁

I didn’t get a notice that these mails weren’t delivered. In my log’s everything looks just fine. But the mails never arrived at the computers of my sister and brother. Although, sending mail to my other brother or my own @gmail-address works just fine. Strange ???

The common factor is that my sister and brother are using the same ISP (belgacom @skynet.be). So, it seems that belgacom was blocking my mails for some reason.

After trying several things, I’ve found a solution to send mails @skynet.be without a problem.

To write e-mail I make use of mutt as my E-Mail Client. Mutt delivers the mail to the postfix mail server. Postfix delivers the mail to the mailserver of my ISP. Of course my internet connection is protected with a firewall.

So, now that I have a Raspberry Pi and a hacked fonera with 4 relays, it’s time to let the Raspberry Pi control the relays of the fonera. This can be done by logging in to the Fonera with ssh and giving some commands.

Of course, having to type these commands everytime you want to switch a relay on or off is cumbersome and useless for automatisation.

Luckily there is an interesting tool available Expect (apt-get install expect).

With expect, I’ve created a small script named gpio.sh that I can use to remotely control the relays of my hacked fonera.

I have no keyboard and display connected to my Raspberry Pi (running Raspbian), but log in to it over the network by using ssh.

Now, I wanted to automatically start a program when the Raspberry Pi boots up, but also be able to see the console output of that program when needed.

To accomplish that, I’ve done the following:

sudo apt-get install mingetty

sudo apt-get install screen

Edit /etc/inittab, and changed the part with getty’s to autologin on tty3 with mingetty as user pi

...snip...
# /sbin/getty invocations for the runlevels.
#
# The "id" field MUST be the same as the last
# characters of the device (after "tty").
#
# Format:
# :::
#
# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty --noclear 38400 tty1
2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
#3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
#4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
#5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
#6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6
T:23:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --autologin=pi tty3
...snip...

Add the following to /home/pi/.profile, to autostart a program when user pi login on tty3

So, when the Raspberry Pi boots, user pi will automatically log in and run the program tstat. Because tstat is started with screen, I can log in with ssh and run screen -R to see the output of tstat and press ctrl-a d to exit screen, but leave tstat running.